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Summary

This is a report on NHS-funded maternity services in England for September 2016, using data submitted to the Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS).

The MSDS is a patient-level data set that captures key information at each stage of the maternity service care pathway in NHS-funded maternity services, such as those maternity services provided by GP practices and hospitals. The data collected includes mother's demographics, booking appointments, admissions and re-admissions, screening tests, labour and delivery along with baby's demographics, diagnoses and screening tests.

The MSDS has been developed to help achieve better outcomes of care for mothers, babies and children. As a 'secondary uses' data set, it re-uses clinical and operational data for purposes other than direct patient care, such as commissioning, clinical audit, research, service planning and performance management at both local and national level. It will provide comparative, mother and child-centric data that will be used to improve clinical quality and service efficiency, and to commission services in a way that improves health and reduces inequalities.

These statistics are classified as experimental and should be used with caution. Experimental statistics are new official statistics undergoing evaluation. They are published in order to involve users and stakeholders in their development and as a means to build in quality at an early stage. More information about experimental statistics can be found on the UK Statistics Authority website.

For the first time this statistical release will contain information relating to breastfeeding initiation status.

Key Facts

This report contains key information based on the submissions that have been made by providers and will focus on data relating to activity that occurred in September 2016.

For September 2016 data, 108 providers successfully submitted data for the MSDS. This compares with 134 providers submitting data in HES for 2015-16¹. We are working closely with providers who did not respond and expect coverage and data quality to increase over time.

83 of these providers submitted birth data relating to babies born in September 2016.

Among women that had a booking appointment in September 2016, 51 per cent were within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. This varied across regions with the highest proportion (57 per cent) of women having appointments in the first 10 weeks in the North of England Commissioning Region and the lowest proportion (37 per cent) in the London Commissioning Region.

Where the woman's height and weight were recorded at the booking appointment, 20 per cent were obese (with a Body Mass Index (BMI) over 30), and 8 per cent were underweight (BMI less than 18.5).

At the time of their booking appointment, 12 per cent of women with a recorded smoking status were smokers, and 80 per cent were non-smokers. The remaining 8 per cent were recorded as 'Unknown'.

Of the births that had a recorded delivery method, 60 per cent were spontaneous vaginal births, 11 per cent had instrumental assistance, 13 per cent were elective caesarean sections and 15 per cent were emergency caesarean sections. The proportion of births by emergency caesarean was highest in the London Commissioning Region (16 per cent) and lowest in the South of England Commissioning Region (13 per cent).

The Apgar score test is a simple evaluation of the health of newborn babies on a scale from 0 to 10. A score below seven is regarded as low. Among term babies born in September 2016 (at 37 weeks gestation or later), 1 per cent of those with an Apgar score at 5 minutes after birth recorded had a score below seven.

Among mothers that gave birth at 37 weeks gestation or later, 79 per cent had skin-to-skin contact with their baby within one hour of birth. The percentage of mothers that had skin-to-skin contact within one hour was highest in the Midlands and East of England Commissioning Region (82 per cent) and lowest in the London Commissioning Region (78 per cent).

73 per cent of babies received maternal or donor breast milk as their first feed.

Please note that the presentation of the 'Validity' measures in the Data Quality report and the Provider Analysis differs from that in earlier statistical releases - full details are provided within each document.